


by tomorrow we should know

by eudaimon



Series: legend and banner headlines [1]
Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 09:13:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/938196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eudaimon/pseuds/eudaimon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don doesn't feel like he's always understood Mac - sometimes, he feels like he's getting closer, but he's not there yet.</p><p>Not everyone can be Jim Harper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	by tomorrow we should know

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, I should note that I could not resist this, try as I might, after the delightful scenes they shared in 2x06. Secondly, there is more of this coming, and it is definitely Don/Sloan in the end-game. This is literally the only way that I could see Mac/Don.
> 
> Enjoy! Leave a comment to let me know what you think.  
> At the start of the series, if you'd told me that DON KEEFER would end up my favourite, I would have laughed in your face.
> 
> But here we are ♥

Firstly...

He'd never admit it, but he's relieved when she walks in. _Jesus fuck_ , he thinks. _Save me from my fuckin' self._ He's been doing this more and more lately - drinking on his own, working while he does it so that he doesn't feel quite so pathetic.

It works.  
Some of the time, it works.

Still, he's glad when Mac sits down. They're friends now (he _thinks_ they're friends now), but he's never really forgotten the proto-crush that he had on her as an intern. It's the accent, he thinks. Or the heels. It smarts still, sometimes. Like a burn.

Which is not to say he thinks about it. Much.

It's just that she smells good and the way she dresses, the blouses and, when she leans forward, the glimpse of the shadows between her breasts and maybe it's been kind of a long time since he got laid and maybe he's drunk more vodka that was strictly wise. And he gets why she can't dress the same way as he does, why sneakers and shirts that have only cursory knowledge of a press would be harder for a woman to carry off. Which is not to say it's face but, hell, he's in the business of not stigmatizing tonight, isn't he? She always looks so damn _good_.

And he was supposed to be drinking alone. In his defense, this is not an eventuality that he planned for.

They talk, of course, about Jerry fuckin' Dantana. Mac's got problems with Don? Who the fuck comes up from D.C with a name like _Dantana_? It sounds like something of a cheesy 70s cop-show and, suddenly, they're supposed to sit around and watch while he brings the whole world down around their fuckin' ears?

But Mac asks, so Don has to give it serious thought - does he trust Jerry? Really trust him? He trusts him as much as he trusts anybody, which doesn't mean that he doesn't also hate his smug, earnest wounded fuckin' face. Belief almost _bleeds_ out of him and Don finds himself resenting that. He's forgotten what it feels like to really _believe_ in something. Troy Davis took the last flicker of that out of him.

And look how that turned out.

He likes that Mac drinks whisky straight up, no Sprite or Coke or soda. He imagines that she'd taste of Scotch and a cigarette that he didn't see her smoke. If he was to kiss her.

If she was to let him kiss her.

*

 _With my life, Don_ , she says and he doesn't believe a word of it (because the fact remains that he _isn't_ Jim Harper and he never was, so he's never had to stand there and watch her bleed and he's never had to be the one who _actually_ saves her life so how would she know whether she _could_ trust him with her life or not?). But it is nice to hear. _When I look at you_ , she says but then his brain starts cycling, Sloan and the football players and everything sort of...loses focus.

He's been giving this an inordinate amount of thought - the guys that Sloan dates (not just the footballer player - he only just heard about the football player - but the others, the seemingly countless others, and how's he going to ever live up to that? He's thirty-five years old, for Christ's sake. He runs, but not religiously, drinks too much, smokes when it occurs to him, works too late, sleeps too little. When he said she was _spectacular_ , he meant it - which means that she deserves _spectacular_ things in return, doesn't it?

He might struggle to live up to that.  
Maybe it isn't just the sex he's worried about.

He knocks by the rest of his vodka and Chelsea pours them both another drink without waiting to be asked.

God, he loves this girl.

*

It feels weird to be in a booth, just the two of them. Strange. Intimate. He sits with one foot up and Mac crosses her legs, the whole length of her thigh pressed against his. Not for the first time, he notices that she has phenomenal legs.

_Focus, Don. Jesus._

When Don was twenty-two, fresh out of Columbia, Mac was twenty-six or twenty-seven...not quite what she is not but the promise of it, definitely. The...seed. Back then, he'd thought that she was crazy talented, insanely hot (he blames that in no small part on her accent) but he didn't really _get_ her. 

(He's still not sure that he does _get_ her, but something definitely clicked into place on her first day at ACN, when he compared her to a Sarah Lawrence Poly-Sci major like a dick and Jim so firmly put him right, smiling the whole time. It took Don the rest of the night to warm to Jim Harper but he could see instantly that he was wrong about Mac. Fuck the Peabodies; you only had to look her in the eye to see just how much she's changed.

He thinks he's closer to getting her now).

*

The way that Mac talks about sin is interesting - a thing that you can't put back together. He sure as shit can't put things back together with Maggie; it probably makes him a completely fucking coward to admit that he'd be scared to even try. Like Mac and Will, it might not be on the level of _slavery_ but it's something else that he'll leave to Jim.

Don Keefer is not a man fond of counting his sins.

"You should go out. You'll meet someone."  
He says it before he's thought it through, before he's really considered how it's going to sound.

"Oh, Don," she says, as they both stand up at the same time, as she turns in at the same time as he does not turn to go. "What if I don't want to _meet_ someone? What if I just want something quick and comfortable with no strings attached with someone I already _know_?"

There's a joke about not being Jim Harper on the tip of his tongue but, somehow, he bites it back. Because it's beneath him. Because he's pretty sure that whatever Mac and Jim have runs way deeper than that.

"That sounds dangerously close to a proposition, Mac."  
"It could be, Don," she says, and it's his drink she picks up, his drink she finishes. "If you wanted it to be, it really, really could."

He catches himself imagining the way that vodka would taste on her mouth.  
Fuck it.

*

"You can think of it as a dry run, if you want," she says, half out of her blouse. "For Sloan, I mean."

"Jesus, Mac, not helpful," he says, but then she presses a slim hand into his already fumbled-open jeans, rakes her fingers through the hair there before she curls her fingers around his dick. She rolls her wrist, stroking, and then he doesn't have one clever thing left to say. He just swallows and rolls his hips, pushing into her hand. They've ended up at his place, closer to AWM than hers, and she stands out in his apartment as she takes her hand off him for long enough to slip out of blouse and bra. He registers the scar on her belly, brushes it with his thumb as she bends to kiss him. That scar is small outward proof - that everything is different now and that they're older than they think.

"How…" he asks her, rucking up her skirt against her thigh so that he can slip two fingers past the elastic of her panties, just tracing her at first, too light to do much good. Teasing because he finds that he likes the way that she shifts her hips as she bites her lips. "What do you like?"

She sighs, shifting against him and he slides one of those fingers into her, just to see how wet she feels.

"I like that you ask, for a start," she says, rocking down onto his finger, making another soft, small sound. "I like it hard. Rough. A whole lot of other things that I'm not going to go into here, thank you very much." She pulls him down for a hungry kiss and there's a fierceness in her right now, a need that he's not used to. Suddenly, he can see how she's survived some of the things that she has - how Jim was always right and how Mac is braver than Don Keefer's got any idea how to be.

The kiss ends with a bitten lip, a throbbing that goes straight to his dick; he catches one of her wrists and presses it up next to her head.

"You sure you don't want to go into them, Mac?" he says, pressing a second finger into her, his thumb grazing over her clit.

"Jesus, Don," she says, squirming. "Just get it done."  
He laughs. And it's feels fucking _amazing_.

The rest of their clothes come off easily. He's got a feeling that they might both end up bruised.  
But maybe they already are.

*

She ends up on all fours and he fucks her from behind - seems like they've both had enough of kissing.  
Kissing isn't what either of them came here for. 

Without thinking about it too much, he holds onto Mac's hips and pulls her back onto his dick again and again until they're coming almost within heartbeats of each other and the way she tightens around his cock as she trembles is pretty close to heaven. He runs his hand over the smooth expanse of her back, feels each individual bump of her spine. Human beings are way too complicated to have happened by accident, right? Something as perfect as she is couldn't be coincidence, could it?

So he's back to God again.

After he's been to the bathroom (dealing with the condom, deliberately not looking at himself too closely in the mirror because he kind of likes that this feels like a dream), he sprawls back on the bed with her. The fact that Mac's already back in her panties isn't surprising - he already knew that she wasn't going to say the night.

"You're not going to do it like that, are you?"

He huffs a laugh.

"WIth Sloan? Fuck no. Not unless she asks nicely."

Mac rolls her eyes and swats at him with one hand.

"I'd go with something gentler," she says. "For, you know. A _regular_ first time."

He lifts his head and gives her an incredulous look.

"Are you fuckin' _producing_ me right now?"

She at least has the good grace to look sheepish.

"Maybe a little?"  
"Candles," he says, almost abruptly. "I imagine candles. Women like candles, right?"

He categorically does not think of Maggie, and the key that he somehow never took back.

"Men think that women like candles," says Mac. "But in my experience, all I can ever do is worry about the wax."

 _I love you_. He thinks it but doesn't say it, worried that he'd be in danger of being misunderstood and, anyway, it isn't quite what he means. Instead, he just bends his head and kisses her scar, which is tidier than he thought it would be and somehow softer than the rest of her skin.


End file.
